For those who are new to affiliating marketing, navigating through the jargon may be overwhelming. To ease the learning curve, we provide you with a gloss common affiliate marketing terms to help your familar with the terminology in the industry.
ABOVE THE FOLD
The area of your blog or website that loads automatically in a browser when a visitor lands on a page without having to scroll.
ADVERTISER
This is the business that manufactures the goods or services you, as an affiliate, advertise. Known more widely as the Merchant. ADWARE Additionally known as "spyware". Adware is typically downloaded by users along with free computer programs, often without their knowledge. Affiliates that wish to use Adware to promote their offerings will typically not be accepted by merchants. Find out more about adware used by affiliates.
AFFILIATE
An individual who promotes products or services for a merchant in exchange for receiving compensation for the sales or leads they drive.
AFFILIATE AGREEMENT
The terms of the affiliate connection as agreed upon by the merchant and affiliate. Generally, it outlines the obligations, guidelines, duties, and legal aspects of the partnership for both parties.
AFFILIATE LINK
A URL that the merchant sends you, together with a special tracking number that you have been given to track the sales you are in charge of making for them.
AFFILIATE MANAGER
The person in charge of a merchant's affiliate program. Their responsibilities include recruiting affiliates, monitoring affiliates' use of unethical promotional techniques, and boosting affiliate sales for the merchant. They also serve as the merchant's and affiliate's point of contact. The merchant may hire the affiliate manager directly or appoint them as an independent service provider to oversee their affiliate program. Likewise known as an OPM.
AFFILIATE NETWORK
A third party who provides affiliate program management to a merchant. Affiliate networks handle reporting for both the merchant and individual affiliates, track affiliate activities, guarantee that sales are accurately documented, pay affiliate commissions, and assist in introducing the merchant to possible affiliates for their goods and services.
AFFILIATE PROGRAM
A program that a retailer offers to let people recommend or refer others to their goods or services in exchange for a commission that is calculated depending on the predetermined intended result that the referral creates. Affiliates are the "persons" who are referring others.
AFFILIATE SOFTWARE
A piece of software that allows a retailer to manage their own affiliate program internally rather than through the use of an affiliate network, which aids in affiliate tracking and reporting.
AFFILIATE TRACKING
A special ID that is affixed to the links you use to direct visitors to the merchant so you may monitor sales or referrals to the store.
ASSOCIATE
Another word for affiliate.
BANNER AD
A graphical ad that an affiliate puts on their website to advertise a merchant.
CHARGE BACK
Refers to a product being returned or a sale “falling through” that you were already paid for. Since the sale didn't actually finalize, the merchant will deduct the amount you were previously given in commission for that sale from your affiliate commissions. This can also happen in lead creation if the merchant determines the leads were false or unqualified.
CLOAKING
Hiding content on a webpage or hiding affiliate tracking code in links. Content hiding is terrible for websites since it violates the policies of popular search engines like Google. Integrating affiliate tracking into links is a common and acceptable technique.
CONTEXTUAL LINK
Refers to a text link placed within your website or blog content versus a link that is placed in the sidebar as a more traditional advertisement.
CO-BRANDING
Some merchants will create a specific and custom landing page for an affiliate to send referrals to that contains both the merchant's branding and the referring affiliate's branding. As an illustration, a merchant may design a page on their website with a lead form that displays the logos of both the merchant and the particular affiliate. The term for this is co-branding. Frequently, retailers restrict Co-Branding options to Super Affiliates alone.
COMMISSION
The amount of money or charge that a merchant gives an affiliate in exchange for the affiliate producing a certain, desired result for the merchant.
CONVERSION
Influencing a user to perform a particular, desired activity. It might be making a purchase, completing a form, joining an email list, or achieving any other specified objective.
CONVERSION RATE
A metric used to show the number of times your affiliate link has generated a predefined conversion compared to the number of times the link has been viewed displayed as a percentage. To find your conversion rate take the amount of sales a link has generated and divide it by the number of impressions the link received and multiple the result by 100 to get your conversion rate percentage. Example – if your link was viewed 100 times and generated 2 sales, then you would take 2 (sales) and divide if by 100 (impressions) to get .02 (result) and multiply that by 100 to get a conversion rate of 2%.
CPA
Cost Per Action (also referred to as Cost Per Acquisition). Refers to the amount of money paid to obtain a desired outcome (usually something like a sale or signup).
CPC
Cost Per Click. Refers to the amount of money paid to generate a click by a user on one of your links. Example – if you spent $200 on an ad campaign and received 100 clicks on that campaign, then your CPC would be .50 cents (clicks generated / campaign cost = CPC).
CPM
Cost Per Thousand. Refers to the amount of money it costs to display an advertisement per 1000 impressions. Example – if you wanted to buy advertising on a website that offered their advertising at a $6 CPM and you wanted that ad to show 10,000 times, then you would need to pay $60 (desired impressions / 1000 * CPM) for that advertising.
DATAFEED
a document with an inventory of every item a retailer offers. Typically, this will include product pictures, product descriptions, product prices, affiliate links, and other information. Online stores with affiliate products are frequently created using affiliate datafeeds.
DISCLOSURE
A page or notice on your blog or website informing readers whether you receive payment or other compensation for any product or service endorsements or buying suggestions you make there, whether through affiliate marketing or through other means.
EPC
Stands for Earnings Per Click. The average amount you get paid each time a user clicks on your affiliate link is known as your earnings per click. You would divide the amount of commissions you have earned from an affiliate link by the total number of clicks the link has received to determine your EPC. For instance, if an affiliate link brought in $4000 in sales during the course of your affiliate connection and was clicked 12,000 times, the earnings per thousand clicks (EPC) would be 33 cents, calculated by dividing the $4000 in sales by the 12,000 hits. This indicates that for every click on your affiliate link, you receive an average of 33 cents in revenue.
INDIE PROGRAM
Short for “independent affiliate program” and refers to a merchant who runs their affiliate program in house themselves using Affiliate Software and not via an Affiliate Network.
JOINT VENTURE (JV)
This usually refers to a business engagement for a certain project, event, or product as opposed to a longer-term, continuous relationship. Example: A joint venture, or JV partnership, would be formed if two well-known bloggers collaborated to develop a single product and simultaneously promoted it.
FIRST CLICK
First click is a term used frequently in affiliate marketing to describe an affiliate program in which the first affiliate to successfully convince a user to click on a link and complete a purchase within the cookie expiration period is credited with the sale, even if the user ended up on the website of another affiliate and converted after clicking on a link from the second site. Whether it is better for the affiliate and the retailer to click first or last has long been up for dispute.
ROI
Return on Investment, or ROI. The gross profit from a campaign less the campaign's operating expenses can be divided by the campaign's operating expenses and multiplied by 100 to determine the percentage of the investment that was returned. This is how to calculate a campaign's ROI. For instance, if a campaign cost $200 to run and you produced a $600 gross profit, you would take the $600 gross profit and divide it by the $200 campaign cost to obtain $400. You would then divide $400 by $200 to get 2 and multiply that result by 100 to find a 200%.
SEO
Search Engine Optimization. The practice of optimizing your website to get it to show up higher in the search engines for specific topics and keywords.
If you enjoyed the insights in this article and would like to learn more about what's happening on the cutting edge of affiliate marketing, feel free to visit our official website Adpos.io and join us for more information!